The Parliament's Economic Commission reported that $25 billion in smuggling is taking place annually.

The Parliament's Economic Commission for Investigation and Investigation into the government's policies in combating smuggling in Iran, after two years of investigation, reported an annual smuggling of $25 billion and said that many institutions have not cooperated in combating smuggling.

The report of the Parliament’s Economic Commission on “Investigation and Investigation of the Government’s Policies in Combating Smuggling and the Reasons for Inefficiency in Combating It” was read in the open court of the Parliament on Monday, May 13. According to the report, published by Fars News Agency, official statistics show that “smuggled goods constitute 22 to 33 percent of the country’s imported goods in different years,” but of this total, only 1 to 8 percent has been discovered. In other words, “on average, the majority of smuggled goods find their way into the domestic market.”

The above-mentioned commission has pointed out that this is the official statistics of the Headquarters for Combating Smuggling of Goods and Currency. However, “if the amount of smuggling exceeds the mentioned estimate, the proportion of smuggled goods in the country’s total imports will increase.”

The parliamentary investigation team has also reached figures that are different from those officially announced so far in 2016 and 2017 by the Headquarters for Combating Smuggling of Goods and Currency.

The results of this investigation show that the amount of goods smuggled in 2016 and 2017 was between $21.5 and $25.5 billion, while the figures announced by the aforementioned headquarters were about $12.5 billion in 2016 and about $13.1 billion in 2017. The investigation commission says: “This huge discrepancy raises numerous questions and doubts regarding the method of estimating the amount of smuggling.”

The report considers the phenomenon of smuggling of goods and currency as "one of the main challenges of the Islamic Republic system" and one of the "manifestations of economic corruption" that "has a direct adverse effect on production and employment, as well as the monetary and financial sphere."

The phenomenon of smuggling in the Islamic Republic is almost as old as the system itself. One of the first to speak publicly about it was Mehdi Karroubi, who raised it during his presidency of the Sixth Parliament. He reported on 33 unauthorized docks and said that a number of them were in the hands of entities that use them to import and export goods.

In July 2012, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, at a conference on preventing smuggling, mentioned “our own smuggling brothers” and revealed the huge revenues from cigarette smuggling. He said: “Between 55 and 60 billion cigarettes are consumed in Iran, which is equivalent to 2 trillion tomans. This figure would make all the world’s top smugglers greedy, let alone our own smuggling brothers.”

At the time, these remarks were met with a reaction from Mohammad Ali Jafari, the then commander of the IRGC. He told Mehr News Agency: "This is a deviant argument raised by people who we believe have vested interests. This organization, like other military institutions, has military docks, but it does not conduct any commercial transactions in them. The armed forces naturally have military docks due to their military status."

He claimed that these forces had never used this opportunity to smuggle goods. Saeed Mortazavi, then head of the headquarters to combat smuggling of goods and currency, had also said a year earlier: “There are no unauthorized docks and their cases have been closed.”

The power struggle over the amount of smuggling of goods and currency was not limited to the Ahmadinejad era. In early December 2014, Hassan Rouhani said at a conference titled "Fighting Corruption" that was held with the participation of the heads of the three branches of government: "If intelligence, guns, money, newspapers, news agencies, and other manifestations of power are gathered in one institution, including Abuzar and Salman, it will become corrupt."

Failure to cooperate with necessary steps to combat trafficking

However, a review of the “government policies in combating smuggling” shows that not only “Abuzar and Salman” but also many government institutions have not cooperated with the commission. The report states: “Despite the necessary infrastructure, the Customs Organization has not taken comprehensive measures to exchange information until the date of preparation of this report.”

The report also highlights some of the measures that should have been taken by the Countering Smuggling of Goods and Currency but were not, including "failure to issue insurance policies for fleets whose shipping documents are not registered, refusal of health insurance to provide insurance coverage for unregistered medicines, and prevention of issuing bills of lading for origins and destinations that are not registered in the comprehensive system of warehouses and storage centers."

Among other things, there is the lack of “organization of foreign exchange intervention by the Central Bank,” which has not “taken any positive steps” since the report was prepared until the day it was read in the parliament. The delegation said: “In order to uncover the facts and realities of smuggling, it has designed and implemented numerous measures, including: designing and implementing various visits to customs and points of entry and exit of goods and currency.”

Smuggling is carried out through "official means"

The investigation board emphasizes that the methods used to smuggle goods and currency "have objective evidence" and that their report is based on definitive information and numerous cases, not on conjecture or assumption.

The important point of the report is that the investigation team, in its investigation, discovered three methods and techniques of smuggling goods, which, according to its producers, "despite the statements of some officials, including officials from the Customs Organization, a large part of it is carried out through official procedures and official sources."

The delegation has called for serious follow-up of the “Sustainable Development and Security of Border Areas Bill” by the Ministry of Interior, including in the provinces of West Azerbaijan, Kurdistan, Kermanshah, and Sistan and Baluchestan. Other issues cited in the report include the failure to complete and launch a database of convicted persons for smuggling goods and currency, deficiencies in handling important and large-scale cases and executing sentences, the failure to allocate special branches to handle crimes of smuggling goods and currency, and the failure to complete the system for identifying and combating smuggled goods.

The report's producers say: "This happens even in cases worth thousands of billions of rials, and the criminal is ultimately sentenced to imprisonment instead of a fine." Also, according to statistics provided by the Penal Organization regarding the amount of collected crimes in cases, "from 2013 to 2017, the collected crimes were less than one percent, about 25 percent, and in contrast to the huge volume of smuggling in the country, smugglers will have less than one percent of the financial fine."

Devices that have performed "poorly"

The investigation board's report cited the "poor performance" of 12 institutions, including the Chamber of Commerce, Customs Organization, Ministry of Economy, Secretariat of Free and Special Economic Zones, Chamber of Guilds, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Organization for the Collection and Sale of Owned Properties, Chamber of Cooperatives, Ministry of Interior, Radio and Television Organization, and Ministry of Health, Treatment and Medical Education.

The report states that regarding legal obligations in the field of combating smuggling, "no specific action was taken in more than 40 obligations and in more than 70 obligations, actions were incomplete."

The investigation board regarding the actions of the Headquarters for Combating Goods and Currency Smuggling has referred to cases that fall under the purview of the Minister of Justice and reported the failure to register the information of the convicted persons in the database of those convicted of goods and currency smuggling.

Overall, the report takes a look at some of the corruption that pervades various government agencies and institutions; a government in which people have witnessed everything from gasoline smuggling to the “missing” of oil rigs. Two years ago, according to reports published in Iranian media, the turnover of gasoline smuggling from Iran to neighboring countries was as large as the country’s entire development budget. Hassan Rouhani said in March 2018 at the Gilan Administrative Council: “We have given the southern borders to the IRGC to fight smuggling; if ten are smuggled, they will seize one of them; it will be lost; it is a very difficult task.”

Source: DW